Tag Archives: Mental illness

Many marijuana enthusiasts share a popular belief that marijuana is the solution to the opioid crisis. As a former opioid addict and as a person who has tried to substitute marijuana for opioids, I beg to differ. My personal experience demonstrates that marijuana is not an effective way to get people off of other drugs. If anything, it only prolongs the suffering of addicts who have the potential to get well.

Leaders of the Parents Movement of the late 1970s and 1980s feared their children’s pot use led to apathy, lower grades and other drugs. The old concerns remain, but the new anti-pot Parents Movement warns more about the fact that marijuana may lead to severe forms of mental illness. A new study confirms that teen marijuana use increases depression and the risk for suicide in young adulthood.

According to the study, the odds of developing depression are 37% higher in young adults up to age 32 who used marijuana as teens, compared to those who did not. The odds of a young adult thinking about suicide were 50% higher in those who smoked pot as teens. The odds of a suicide attempt were almost 3.5 times higher in the pot smokers versus those who didn’t use marijuana. Continue reading Large new study shows teen cannabis use risk for later depression→

Anthony Bourdain. Kate Spade. You know their names and you know the unfortunate circumstances surrounding their untimely passing. Bourdain, 61, and Spade, 55, took their lives in suicides by hanging. Their deaths marked an immediate response from mental health advocates while pushing mental illnesses such as depression and anxiety to the forefront of the news cycle.

Prior to their deaths the CDC’s (Center for Disease Control), Vital Signs report found that suicide rates have been rising in nearly every state. In 2016, nearly 45,000 Americans age ten or older died by suicide. Even more alarming, suicide is now the 10th leading cause of death and is one of three leading causes that are on the rise. But what does this mean for states where drug use runs rampant? Colorado saw a 34.1 percent increase in suicides while Washington and Oregon saw increases by 18.8 percent and 28.2 percent. Take into consideration that these states have legalized marijuana for recreational and/or medicinal use and it’s clear that mind-altering drugs can aggravate those with and without mental health conditions.

Bourdain was a long time pot smoker and made countless marijuana jokes, often alluding to smoking weed in the restaurants he visited. The “Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown” Twitter account once tweeted an elaborate illustration detailing “how to roll a joint.”

Did copious amounts of THC play a part in Bourdain’s death? At this point we don’t know for sure, but we do know that his weed addiction began in his younger years right before the publication of his best-selling book, “Kitchen Confidential,” in 2000. “Weed was a major expense. Before I reached the point where weed made me paranoid and agoraphobic, it was costing me a few hundred dollars a week,” the chef recalled. Fast forward to becoming a successful star, and Bourdain was using cocaine to offset the effects of weed. It’s important to note that cannabis is playing a role in many suicides by causing mental health disorders, including depression and psychosis. One has to wonder if a cocktail of drugs played a part in his untimely death.

Kate Spade suffered from mental illnesses for several years. She was seeking help during the last five years, “seeing a doctor on a regular basis and taking medication for both depression and anxiety,” widower Andy Spade said in a statement. It’s worth nothing that we don’t know if any drug use triggered her problems. The CDC’s Vital Signs report found many factors contributing to the various suicide cases across the country. It’s eye-opening that more than half of people who died by suicide did not have a known diagnosed mental health condition at the time of death.

What a shame it is that thousands of Americans are advocating to legalize a drug with the potential to severely damage the brain? There’s absolutely no sense in burdening our country with a mental health crisis.

Average flower is 17.1% in one state with legal sales of recreational marijuana, Colorado, much higher than the national average (HIDTA, 2017), and as high as 30% THC in some samples (NBC News report). It should be noted that variation in testing results is quite high between laboratories (Jikomes and Zoroob, 2018).

Cougle JR et al. (2015). Quality of life and risk of psychiatric disorders among regular users of alcohol, nicotine, and cannabis: An analysis of the National Epidemiological Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions (NESARC). J Psychiatr Res., 66-67, 135-141

Di Forti M, et al. Proportion of patients in South London with first-episode psychosis attributable to use of high potency cannabis: a case-control study. Lancet Psychiatry. 2015;2(3):233-8.

Raemakers, JG Driving Under the Influence of Cannabis: An Increasing Public Health Concern. JAMA published online March 26, 2018 Regular cannabis users wrongfully believe that cannabis does not affect their driving performance or that they can compensate for cannabis-associated impairment. Raemakers_2018 JAMA driving editorial.pdf

Olfson M, Wall M Cannabis Use and Risk of Prescription Opioid Use Disorder in the United States American J Psychiatry. Cannabis use, even among adults with moderate to severe pain, was associated with a substantially increased risk of nonmedical prescription opioid use at 3-year follow-up. https://doi-org.proxy.hsi.ucdenver.edu/10.1176/appi.ajp.2017.17040413

Graph provided by The Marijuana Report/National Families in Action. March 2018

Olfson M, Wall M Cannabis Use and Risk of Prescription Opioid Use Disorder in the United States, American J Psychiatry. Cannabis use, even among adults with moderate to severe pain, was associated with a substantially increased risk of nonmedical prescription opioid use at 3-year follow-up. https://doi-org.proxy.hsi.ucdenver.edu/10.1176/appi.ajp.2017.17040413

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Tragedy Strikes the U.S. — 50 New Cannabis Related Child Deaths in 2019

PopPot.org is monitoring news reports of child deaths that have occurred since Colorado legalized recreational marijuana. Please share this information with your elected officials and law enforcement. The media has yet to pick up on this story!